The contemporary landscape is constantly changing and being re-defined. As towns and cities become gentrified it increases displacement and heightens a sense of isolation in the population. As long as a nation can portray a happy and glittering image while glitches in its society remain concealed, on surface all seems to be in control.

In Shifts, Varsha Nair presents her own, and collaborative and curated works that include mixed media, multimedia, and a site-specific installation, spanning from 2000 until the present. Like layered palimpsests, the video projections, drawings and photographs address the illusive “/” space, the space in-between that bridges and separates, acting as a divider but simultaneously as a connecting point. Tracing flux, loss and uncertainty, the works presented here deconstruct, reconstruct and map different realities both tangible and abstract, private and communal.

Explored also is the bond between built spaces and memory of places that once were significant to people inhabiting them but now seem ghostly, covered up or completely erased and forgotten, becoming blind spots in contemporary society. Impermanence, ephemerality, and transience are evoked to tell stories, bringing places of the past into the present to remind and reclaim some of their previous integrity and keep them visible.

Varsha Nair was born in Kampala, Uganda, and studied at Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayaji Rao University, Baroda, India. Inviting multidisciplinary collaborations, her work encompasses various approaches and genres including making, writing, and organising projects, including for Womanifesto in Thailand. Varsha has lived in Thailand since 1995 and exhibited internationally including at About Cafe/Studio, Chulalongkorn Art Centre, BACC, Khoj (New Delhi), Tate Modern (London), HKW (Berlin), Art in General (New York), Lodypop (Basel).

She is currently invited by Lucerne School of Art to mentor Masters students and set up the Masters Dialogue Program.

This entry was posted by cw on Wednesday, October 31st, 2018 at 10:35 am.
It is filed under Art Exhibitions, Shifts, WTF!.
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